MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="----=_NextPart_01CCEE40.1BDD0910"
This document is a Single File Web Page, also known as a Web Archive file. If you are seeing this message, your browser or editor doesn't support Web Archive files. Please download a browser that supports Web Archive, such as Windows® Internet Explorer®.
------=_NextPart_01CCEE40.1BDD0910
Content-Location: file:///C:/6D7A90D4/Abstract.htm
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii"

Right Wing Political Extremism in the Great Depres=
sion

Alan de Bromhead, Barry Eichengreen
and Kevin H. O’Rourke

University of Oxford, University of Californa=
span> –
Berkeley, University of Oxford

Abstract

We =
examine
the impact of the Great Depression on the share of votes for right-wing ant=
i-system
parties in elections in the 1920s and 1930s. We confirm the existence of a =
link
between political extremism and economic hard times as captured by growth o=
r contraction
of the economy.What mattered=
was not
simply growth at the time of the election but cumulative growth performance=
.

But=
the effect
of the Depression on support for right-wing anti-system parties was not equ=
ally
powerful under all economic, political and social circumstances. It was gre=
atest
in countries with relatively short histories of democracy, with existing ex=
tremist
parties, and with electoral systems that created low hurdles to parliamenta=
ry representation.Above all, it was greatest where d=
epressed
economic conditions were allowed to persist.